Julia Cameron, the prolific writer, journalist, teacher and creative force behind “The Artist’s Way” books and workshops, also happens to be the ex-wife of Martin Scorcese, a sober alcoholic, a dedicated single mother and a lapsed Catholic who has made a life’s work of searching for spiritual harmony and chasing inspiration in what she often found to be a harrowing and unyielding world.

Cameron’s latest book, “Floor Sample,” is billed as a creative memoir, but the author says no artistic liberties were involved in its writing. Over 400 pages, Cameron instead chooses to baldly chronicle her inner struggles, exposing past and present demons with candor and ferocity, no names changed to protect the innocent. During a recent phone interview with the 57-year-old author, she discussed the book’s timing and the cathartic experience of writing so freely.

“When I was first approached about doing an autobiography, I said, ‘absolutely not,”‘ Cameron recalled, laughingly, “But when I sat down, memories came pouring out. It wrote very quickly – I think there was an emotional impulse, because once I started in, the story itself carried me along. It was a very intense writing period and took a year and change to finish.”

Cameron touchingly recounts many emotionally charged periods of her life in “Floor Sample,” most notably her mother’s eventual surrender to cancer and the dissolution of two marriages. To a reader’s surprise, she is not the least bit shy in providing the substance of her personal interactions with numerous family members, friends and lovers, and spares no one her trademark scrutiny, not even her famous director ex-husband.

“The book has not affected any relationships,” Cameron asserted. “I was most concerned about my daughter (30-year-old actress-playwright Domenica Cameron-

Scorcese), but she was fine with it. And I haven’t had any hysterical outcry from either of my ex-husbands, either. The dedication on the book is ‘To Those I Love,’ and my intent was really to look at my own side of the street.”

The term “creative” as applied to autobiographies began to cast something of a pall when TheSmoking Gun.com revealed in January that best-selling author James Frey’s memoir, “A Million Little Pieces” was more fiction than fact. It created such a critical media stir that even Oprah Winfrey wasn’t immune, after she shilled the book on her TV show book club. But Cameron stands by the authenticity of “Floor Sample,” defends her claim on creativity as a word and process and even joins in the disapproving chorus against Oprah.

“The work I’m known for is creativity work,” she explained. “I was trying to braid my autobiography together with that work. Since I write fiction too, it wasn’t very tempting to fictionalize my memoir,” Cameron adds, “I was interviewed about the Frey thing and I said I was more upset with Oprah than with him because she was in favor of a book that is so clearly anti-Alcoholics Anonymous.”

Indeed, Cameron may owe her very life and craft to AA. In the infancy of her career, she often found it necessary to imbibe to produce her writing, we are told in “Floor Sample.” The drinking went uncontrolled into her first marriage and the reader is quickly introduced to the tenets of AA and the support system of sober alcoholics Cameron rallied to her aid in an effort to stop self-destructing, post-divorce. “Just don’t drink,” she would tell herself when things became nearly unbearable and it is this mantra that carries her through today.

“When I got sober 28 years ago, that was a completely life-altering experience,” Cameron says, “It put me on a spiritual path and gave me the underpinnings for ‘The Artist’s Way.’ It also got very difficult because I had the challenge of maintaining sobriety for my daughter. I was a single mother for many years and I basically supported Domenica off of my writing.”

Alcoholism has not been Cameron’s only battle, however, and “Floor Sample” resonates because it depicts Cameron as pitting herself against her own desires to create, nurture and evolve as an artist, mother and partner. Her second husband, entrepreneur Mark Bryan, became her business partner with The Artist’s Way workshops and their relationship continues, years after the divorce.

“We’ve written two books together and we’re cordial,” Cameron said. “Part of what went into our divorce agreement is that we would continue to support each other.

“I think everybody encounters difficulty,” she continued, “It’s just more pitched in some people. In my experience, divorce takes you out for about 10 years, but you hear people talk about it lightly. The same with depression. You only have to have one good breakdown before you realize you need help. It’s pretty frightening.”

Having successfully completed the “Floor Sample” book tour, Cameron is on to other projects. She and Bryan have a possible upcoming creativity series on PBS and she recently sold the manuscript of another book, “Mozart’s Ghost,” to St. Martin’s Press for publication in early 2008. Cameron and her music partner, Emma Lively, are also hard at work on a musical called “Magellan,” named for the famed maritime explorer about whom Cameron dreams often in “Floor Sample.” “They say it’s supposed to take 9 1/2 years to write a musical,” she reported optimistically. “We’re about halfway in and counting.”

There is also a new book being written for Putnam that will combine Cameron’s creativity teachings with her interest in spirituality. “Catholicism wasn’t the answer for me,” she admitted, “But I still speak to God. I just don’t define it very tightly. I do believe there is a benevolent listening something.”

Cameron, who has lived variously in Chicago, Taos, New York and Los Angeles over the past three decades, has for the moment settled back in Manhattan. After flirting with time and space, she seems to have finally learned that physical geography matters less than finding the place within that one can call home. It’s a journey to which her readership readily relates.

“My life is at least as intricate as my readers’ lives,” she said. “People say that ‘The Artist’s Way’ changed their lives but when they talk about ‘Floor Sample,’ they tell me, ‘I was with you all the way.'”

Andrea Berggren is a Denver-based freelance writer and former Denver Post staff writer.